In search of the biology of systems

This paper will propose to do as von Bertalanffy once did, and that is to draw on the biological sciences, now hugely advanced beyond that ever imagined by von Bertalanffy and his peers, and use its findings, architectures and emergent behaviors, to argue for a biology of technology and enterprise systems. We seek a science and approach that we believe will provide richer insight into system failure, 'health' maintenance, repair, replication, growth, and mutation, all those features of the evolution of systems which constantly challenge us and which thus far we have only been able to explain via macro-level models and tools. We propose to go deeper into the structure of these systems and to discover the "DNA" (building blocks) of these systems. Thus establishing a foundation to understand their behavior using biological analogies which we believe will turn out to be more than metaphors. We assert that these systems have micro-structures which will explain their individual life cycle and their communal ecology.